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THE UTAH NEWSPAPER HALL OF FAME mountain" and he subsequently held key editorial positions in Los Angeles and San Bernardino, California. There he met his future wife, Orsa B. Hurd, an Ohio native who was employed by Redlands University. Offered editorship of a Globe, Arizona paper, Cherry accepted, then proposed to Orsa and they were married on June 16, 1913. For a time the young couple engaged in ranching near Montague, California but lack of success in that endeavor and Howard's journalistic yen combined to lead them to Moab, Utah where from 1916 until early 1918 he was involved in a two-paper struggle for the readership of Grand and neighboring San Juan counties. The Cherry's departed Moab early in January, 1918; the Independent, published by F. W. Strong, was acquired by the Grand Valley Times in September and became a part of today's Moab Times-Independent. Cherry was only briefly between papers. On January 3, 1918 he became editor of the Piute Chieftain in Marysvale. After 14 months, as Alter's Early Utah Journalism records, "He wrote 'Thirty' for the Chieftain and graciously refrains from saying in his Valedictory all that he thought. He transferred his printing plant to Gunnison. Thank goodness Editor Cherry loved the paper well enough to keep a full file of it even if the Piute tribesmen did not think enough of it to take it." Gunnison proved to be the right move. He published the News until his death at age 71 in 1941 and along with it the Salina Sun, which he acquired June 2, 1923. Orsa took a personal interest in the Sun, travelling between the two communities to carry out publisher's duties until 1927. At that time the family moved to Salina and thereafter her husband became the commuter. Prominent in both civic and fraternal circles, Howard Cherry was a charter member of the Gunnison Lions Club, served as a City Councilman in Salina, was active in businessmen's organizations in both communities and in the Masonic Lodge in Richfield. A sports fan, he loved baseball more than other athletic competition, but also followed basketball and football and was an ardent fisherman and hunter. Upon his death, the two newspapers were taken over by 449 |
